Tight-Arse Tuesdays - Vegetable Packet Soup - Without The Packet

I have no idea why I never thought of this before, but it just occured to me when I was trying to think of ways to save money. Another recipe I've been working on is tomato leathers in my dehydrator pre-flavoured so all you do is add it to water to make pasta sauce.

I hate packaged soups. They always taste a bit funny to me. Of course, it's filled with preservatives and, oh, about $4 a fricken box. But that's only a dollar a soup, you say! Yeah well.. this recipe is only about TEN CENTS a soup. Cheaper than that girl you don't like. Easier, too.

Ingredients:

2 cobs corn
2 cups frozen peas (once mine actually grow, I'll be drying these freshly boiled baby)
2 carrots
2 capsicum - any colour (bellpepper)
2 spring onions
2 stalks celery
1 red onion
2 zucchini
3 baby eggplant
dehydrated garlic (already had it on hand, but you can just use 5 cloves garlic and dry and smoosh)
dried parsley
dried oregano
sea salt (I used pink himalayan though)
pepper
1/4c dehydrated stock or 4 smooshed buillon cubes
2 cups cous cous

Place couscous, stock, and spices to taste in the jar.

Using a knife, remove the kernals of corn from the cob. Throw leftover cob to chickens. Save corn husks for recipe I'll be giving you next week. On the bottom of the dehydrator place the corn and peas spread evenly. You'll need to stir these every 2 hours to keep them from sticking.

Instead of spending hours cutting carrots and zucchini, just shred them. I used a rather thick cut shredder, so it would be nice sized bits. Dice red onion and capsicum and thinly slice green onion. Slice celery and eggplant lengthwise and then chop. Dehydrate six hours, checking every two to disperse the ingredients evenly for optimal drying.

Package.

1 part soup mix to 4 parts water. 1/4c mix 1c water makes roughly one bowl of soup. Just put in bowl, pour boiling water over, wait a few minutes and enjoy!

Perfect for businessladies on the go who don't have time to prepare lunch that day. Keep at work or in the cupboard! Much healthier alternative to packaged soup - and much cheaper too!

Depending on the size of your ingredients, this should make roughly 20 servings of soup.